Alex Hates Music: Fun-a-Day 2015

Day 20

TODAY'S SONG:

"Calgary" by Bon Iver

A few things this song reminds me of. Most recently, I remember driving through Ellicottville on our way to Maryland for a job interview I had last summer. We just happened to be listening to this album on our way there, so I guess it stuck. I remember the off-season ski lodges and corn fields.

A little further back, I remember sitting at the coffee shop in the Buff State student union looking at my iPad while waiting for one of my final classes to start. I found Pitchfork's year end list of 2011, scrolled through, and found that Bon Iver had taken the #1 spot for album of the year. I tend to disagree with them a lot, but I thought this one was a good pick. However, there should have been an asterisk about the final track on the album, which is the weirdest most out of place garbage track in music history (as far as I know; although I guess that's probably what people thought about “Revolution 9” on the White Album and all). I will show you what I mean:

Then I remember the first time I ever heard Bon Iver. Kayleigh and I had taken a trip to Pittsburgh, visiting our friends Caroline and Lou. Caroline baked a homemade pizza and we probably opened like half a dozen bottles of various wines. Lou was involved with some outdoorsy organization which was presenting the Banff Film Fest. We weren't entirely sure what that was, but we went anyway and it was awesome.

The feature film was about an Australian kayaker who attempted to cross the stretch of water between Australia and New Zealand. Prior to that, there were several shorter films, including one about “no-boarding,” which is snowboarding without the straps to connect your feet to the board. There was a lot of beautiful slow motion footage of no-boarders in Japan, but I was struck by the soundtrack. It occurred to me that it might be that band I had heard about a couple years before, Bon Iver. That band everyone liked that I decided to not look into for no reason. And it turned out that, yes, all the songs in that short film were from For Emma, Forever Ago. Lucky for me, my pal Jordan had sent me a few mp3 CDs a year earlier which happened to include that album. Kayleigh and I listened to it on repeat for about a year.

Here's my song, featuring the poem "The Vacation" by Wendell Berry (and a clip or two of Matt Berry from Snuff Box).